


Grudgingly

by Hyacinthium



Series: Oumota Weekend 2019 [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Banter, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff and Humor, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Injuries, Morbid Teens, Pre-Canon, Pre-Game Personalities (New Dangan Ronpa V3), talking about death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 06:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17678075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyacinthium/pseuds/Hyacinthium
Summary: Momota Kaito never expected to start dealing with... Whatever the hell you call being constantly found and patched up by the school's 'nurse's assistant'. In the end though, well, he's really not upset with it either. Even if Ouma is ambiguously a ghost. The main problem is how both of them are assholes.





	Grudgingly

**Author's Note:**

> Pregame oumota fluff??? Hhh mmm. 
> 
> A submission for oumota weekend, day one! Enemies to friends to lovers is the prompt I picked out.

"You're a dumbass," Ouma says. 

Like always, as if talking about the weather, Ouma Kokichi is insulting yet another patient. The short boy is well-known in school as the nurse's pet. Always hanging around between cloistered beds and sterile drawers full of medical supplies. He's a 'ghost' that seems to vanish from class. Black hair with hints of purple and dull eyes much the same. At least, that's what people whisper while trying not to get cursed. 

Kaito would be laughing if Ouma's patient could be anyone but him.

More burning antiseptic gets blotted onto Kaito's ruined knuckles, and the boy can't help but hiss. Mauve eyes immediately spot the way Ouma’s frozen expression twitches. Figures that a guy like him would be a sadist. Or maybe some kind of masochist- because who else would impassively stare at Kaito's beaten up half-corpse before whipping out a first aid kit?

"And you're an asshole, aren't you?" Kaito spits, twisting his head away from the sight of his own blood. "Bet you heard the fighting and waited."

"Yup."

Turns out that the alleyway walls are currently crawling with cock roaches. Meanwhile, Ouma is continuing to address the raw wounds on a tan hand. It's like the boy is an emotionless machine made of nurse skills. Probably wants to be a nurse just so that he can make people fear for their lives.

If that's the reason why Kaito has to put up with this robot of a caretaker- well fuck that. He's not going to turn down free help, no, but there's no way in hell that Kaito is going to end up dealing with this shit again. Ouma is intent but slow and Kaito has part time jobs to get to. Not like people give shits about kitchen staff having bruises. Kaito acts like a good kid there at least. Can't blame him for being money hungry, right?

Ouma scoffs, "Momota-san is a child."

"Fuck you."

"Squirmer. About to cry?"

Kaito grits his teeth and glares over at Ouma’s stupidly nonchalant face. All he wants to do in this moment is deck the little creep. But the other boy is finally bandaging his hand up. It's insane how long Ouma has taken to finish this up. He's smeared creams on bruises, tended to scrapes and cuts, and only just finished to the main picture. 

"If I ever see you again I'll beat your snot nosed face in," Kaito growls.

"Do you like trash scent leaking into your bloodstream?" Ouma slowly asks, mockingly. 

Mauve and purple stare at one another as nausea fills Kaito's stomach. He looks away and tries to force himself up, but finds himself being forced back down by small hands.

"Also, you have a concussion," is his answer. "So good luck for when the ambulance comes."

"The wh-"

Ouma smiles dryly, "Joking. My parents own a clinic five minutes from here. Get off your ass."

Slack jawed, Kaito stares at his unacceptable rescuer and allows his eyes to narrow. Right into tiny slices of indignant rage. It's becoming extremely obvious that Ouma really doesn't give a shit. About potential risk to his own health at the very least. Kaito can't help but wonder about why the boy has a full blown wound care kit in his bags. He's not just curious though, no, he's worried.

"Have you ever considered," the boy begins, grimacing as the adrenaline finally starts to die down, "That you shouldn't be inviting the kind of guy that gets into bi-daily fights to your house?" 

Purple eyes get rolled to hell and back.

That's all the answer that Kaito gets and his silence is all Ouma needs. Kaito gets hoisted out of the alley, and helped back into the streets. An old man looks at them with senile disapproval. Delinquent, or trash, Kaito can read in those wrinkles. The boy snorts and goes back to refusing to lean. Ouma stomps his foot until that resistance dies. 

"I hate you so much, Ouma Kokichi."

As Kaito's eyes stare down at messy black-plum hair... 

Ouma looks up at him and smiles, so earnestly and purely that Kaito must be dead, and then just as angelically says-

"But you'll love not dying of infection."

The moment is completely and utterly ruined but Kaito starts laughing anyway. His own lips grow into a grin, glee born from the sudden and absurd contrast bubbling through him. Suddenly, it doesn't matter that Kaito just barely lost a fight with grown men. All he finds himself thinking about is how Ouma went from beautiful to deadpan brat in less than a second.

That's the story of how Kaito and Ouma met.

That was three months ago.

"Holy fucking shit fuck you Ouma what th- Fuuuuck!" Kaito yells violently, lips curled into a snarl as his right hand shoves a rag into his mouth. "Fffrhhuuuchhh!" 

Ouma laughs at him before picking more thorns out of his left hand. He hums too, filling up the nurse's office with something more pleasant than Kaito's agony. Plucking a particularly large one, he snickers, "Momota-chan is silly."

"Ssshhkk. OOHWEH?!" the boy reports back with while slamming his eyes shut. There's no way that this bastard can see me cry, Kaito mentally tells himself.

"Saline leaking from the eyes due to pain is natural," Ouma immediately murmurs. 

Metal against cloth enters Kaito's hearing. Then, he opens his eyes and sees that his hand is clear of 'biological plant warfare'. Next time he'll let Ouma save that dumbass cat all by himself. Kaito stoically watches as his hand is gently cleaned and bandaged. Definitely stoic even if the teen winces a lot. Of all the things he's doing, blushing isn't one. 

But he wants to. 

After months of finding himself getting patched up by Ouma Kokichi, after each fight or more, Kaito has given up on trying to avoid attachment. He's crushing on this strange yet admirable classmate that everyone avoids.

"Hey... What class are you in?" Kaito asks as Ouma's fingertips slowly rub the bandage.

Purple eyes glance up at Kaito with a familiar blandness obscuring any emotions. The boy blinks, growing tense, and Ouma looks away with a sense of yearning drifting around him. Something like annoyance also starts to shine through too. In another second, just one, it all slips away. 

"I sit behind you," is what flows from Ouma’s lips.

Easy smiles spread across their faces as Kaito demands that Ouma tells the truth. But being totally honest is something that neither of them really are. That clinic wasn't run by Ouma’s family. Kaito never really talks about himself and neither does Ouma. His crush is utterly stupid when they're barely friends. Going out after school just because they can never happens. 

It's like Ouma really is a ghost. As though he stops existing after a certain distance from school. Not elusive, not even invisible, the boy that lays stern yet careful healing hands upon Kaito's wounds simple ceases to exist.

"Ouma... You aren't dead, right? If I punch you out of the radius if this school, you'll still exist. Right?" Kaito eventually asks, watching the strange boy busy himself with organizing things. "All those rumors about you being this ghost of someone who died in here- those are just fucked up bullying attempts, right?"

Black hair swishes as Ouma turns to look back at him, and a secretive softness lays with the smile that Kaito sees before him. It makes his mouth dry. Dim light from a half obscured window exposes the dust between them, the sun beginning to set upon the perpetually abandoned nurse's office. Kaito imagines then, just as instantly as Ouma's beauty makes him sweat, that the light of the moon would work much better. That perhaps Ouma’s ambiguously present and yet very real enigma will be solved during the dead of night.

"I like to pretend that the lights in the sky are stars at night," Kaito murmurs. He cracks a shaking smile as Ouma's eyes watch him with an odd fondness.

"What will Momota-chan do if I am already dead? What would he do if he comes to school and an announcement says I've just died? What if I go missing, and Momota-chan loses his easy ticket back to health?"

Kaito's mouth dries even further as he finds no words in it, nor in his mind.

Then they tumble out on their own in the form of, "I'll hunt down the fucker that killed you and return the favor."

“And what if I killed myself?” 

“Ouma... Don't joke like that,” Kaito croaks, suddenly devoid of both humor and determination. Mauve eyes and purple both blink. The boy looks into those eyes across from him and finally notices how much more alive they look than three months ago. How confused they look too. Ouma doesn't seem to get the issue at all though.

He huffs a forced laugh and follows up with, "Killing someone that already died by digging them up and burning the body is too morbid even for me. So I'd rather not give you the satisfaction."

Eyes stare into him before Ouma silently returns to organizing the already meticulous drawers. 

"If someone killed me because I got into Dangan Ronpa, would you kill them even though we'd both have forgotten one another?" is another lowly spoken question. Ouma’s back gives no hint as to his expression, and his voice is blanker than ever before. There's only the sound of packages moving around inside of plastic. 

"I'd rather join and kill you before killing everyone else too," but it's a lie. Kaito can't imagine seeing Ouma’s dead body. He can't even muster up the imagination to think about killing the other boy. "So shut the fuck up. Let's go home already!"

For once, Ouma complies with him. 

It takes two days for Kaito to finally look at the seat behind him. He stops dead at the sight of Ouma Kokichi looking down at his lap, dead to the world. Probably doing something on his phone. Kaito gets up and looms, but there's only a book with a picture of the Big Dipper inside. Something a little bit similar to betrayal rises up in Kaito's chest.

"Ouma you little shit. You absolute shit. What is wrong with you?" the boy rasps quietly despite it being lunch time. 

Those eyes dart up to him before Ouma says, "Usually, I don't even come to class. So don't worry about ignoring me, because you haven't."

Barbs get traded until some concerned looking girl tells Kaito to stop being so rude. Kaito almost thinks that she doesn't see Ouma, right up until the other boy outright laughs and thus gains her attention. She fidgets uncontrollably while standing her ground. Kaito can actually respect that just a little. Even if she's implying that Ouma is being bullied by him. 

Honestly, it's the other way around. 

"You act like you've never seen two friends talk before," Ouma says before putting his book away. “Sometimes people joke about odd things. Like when I say that I want to shave Momota-chan.”

“Fuck off.”

The girl looks at them with the most obvious case of 'too tired for this' that Kaito has ever seen. Fair enough, but he's likewise way too happy to care. He lets her take her manufactured sympathy with her as she walks away. Maybe he's throwing her under the bus though. Yet Kaito is still too overjoyed by Ouma's admission of friendship. A goofy grin spreads across his face. 

Ouma finally notices it and responds by looking first confused, then shocked, and finally- dumbfounded.

"What?" 

"Nothing at all, you brat."

"The oddly sized one is you. Giant."

"Let's go to an arcade after school."

Arcade going results in Kaito waiting two hours in front of the most popular arcade in town. By the fourth hour, he goes home alone.

He has no idea what he was expecting from Ouma. Even if they're friends, that guy just isn't the type to reach out like this. And maybe Kaito really is too crude, too much of the kind of person that goes fighting with the idea of losing too hard in mind. No one wants to be friends with the one asshole who keeps getting himself beaten up. That's the most obvious thing in the world.

Kaito sighs, rubbing the single bruise on his cheek. The weird rub cream stuff that Ouma gives him is nice. Mostly when the other boy applies it for him. 

"Shit, I'm stupid!" Kaito hisses angrily, feeling like nothing but a fool. 

"Yep."

Tense as hell and feeling like a volcano, Kaito jumps while turning to look behind himself. Ouma looks at him. Standing right there in a strange combination of jeans, white button down, and a navy sweater vest…

"Ouma, you're a fucking nerd. Who decided that you could dress yourself?" Kaito whispers while horrified. He blinks away from the holo belt around that waist."Also. What the hell took you so long?" 

Placid purple eyes flutter as Ouma looks down at his neon orange and pink shoes. 

"Died and stitched up, " Ouma replies with a frown. Then the boy turns around and heads into the direction of the arcade.

Realizing that only one option exists is difficult. But Kaito is a determined kind of guy, and that means something in the end. He marches forward and puts a hand on surprisingly broad shoulders. Ouma peers up at him with a nearly knowing curiosity. It makes Kaito flustered in how obvious he suddenly hopes it is. Wearing the best outfit he has is honestly weird. 

"Please go on a dinner date with me instead so that we can stop being just friends!" the boy quickly blurts. Kaito flounders as Ouma faces him fully. He has a lot more than that in mind for how he confesses. Or rather, Momota Kaito is a short sighted idiot the likes of which cannot be measured by the human species. 

Ouma tilts his head, giving off an almost eerie feeling, "Even though I'm dead?" 

Both of them stare into the other's eyes. 

"If you're dead, then I'd like to know who your taxidermist is," he murmurs. "Anyone that says you're dead is going blind. Or they already are. Honestly, I don't give a shit about that. I've always liked ghosts and stories about murder. Maybe I'll solve the one about you."

Formerly blank eyes widen as Ouma's face fills up with blood, turning a rich crimson. The boy both preens and falters before the weight Kaito's words. It looks like even someone as composed as Ouma can be caught off guard. Knowing that is enough for Kaito to grin again, hopeful.

"Well. If Momota-chan wants to date a ghost despite how he cringes away from my paranormal horror nov-" 

"Hey! Don't call me out!"

"I'm hungry. Mister boyfriend should treat me to dinner."

Kaito's mouth produces a series of squeaks while the rest of him becomes a brighter red than Ouma. But damn it, he's hungry too. Trying to do friend stuff only to request date stuff is draining. Now is absolutely the time for a grotesque amount of calories. Which calls for sad and greasy arcade pizza. 

A severe glare radiates from Ouma’s impassive face, “I like this ramen place ten minutes from here. You're going to take me there.”

Mauve eyes dart to the way that Ouma waits patiently. 

“Ugh, fine. I hate you.”

“You'll love not dying from cholesterol levels that are turning you into a living candle.”

Kaito can't help it. 

He smiles and wholeheartedly laughs.


End file.
